The Cambridge Theorem (13 page)

Thinking about the Kennedy assassination after all this time made Smailes pause as he replaced the file. He wondered if it was true, after all, that Oswald had been the killer. He opened the bottom file drawer, which began with a file labelled
Marie Celeste
. Then a large
Miscellaneous
file. Then a big alphabetic jump to
UFOs
. He closed the drawer, leaving the cabinet unlocked. If the family were due in the following day, it would be simpler if they didn't have to hunt around for keys. He scanned the outside of the case carefully, but could see no distinct prints with the naked eye.

The standing bookcase to the right of the file cabinet was filled almost exclusively with mathematics and physics textbooks, with a row of binders on the top shelf. Smailes removed one and found workpapers which contained an incomprehensible series of formulae and equations. He replaced the book and shuddered slightly. Mathematical formulae had always looked like barbed wire to him.

Across the room the bookshelves above the bed contained more varied titles. He noticed also that Bowles had them arranged into a kind of private library, with identifying labels taped to the base of each spine. They seemed to reflect the subjects displayed in the files, meticulously arranged by subject and author. Bowles had obviously been a lover of books. Most were hardbacks and had been kept in excellent condition. He removed an old volume on Himalayan travel and noticed that the dust jacket had been carefully repaired. On the inside cover was written
Simon Bowles, 1967
, a conspicuous sign of pride of ownership.

There was one whole shelf of books relating to American society and to the Kennedy assassination in particular. There were almost two shelves of books about World War II, international espionage, and communism. In this section were also biographies and memoirs about Cambridge University in the twentieth century. There was nothing to suggest to the detective what might have been preoccupying the young man on the night of his death. He checked the desk drawer again, and confirmed that there were no files or papers on which Bowles might have been working. He decided to check the clothes closet on the far side of the room. It contained a modest selection of clothes, and an old briefcase lying on the floor. Smailes removed it expectantly and sat down in one of the armchairs in front of the electric fire.

He was disappointed. There were a lot of handwritten notes in a childish hand which the detective found practically indecipherable, some mathematical work, bank statements, and a collection of personal letters all received within the last six months. He glanced through one from Bowles' sister, one from his mother and one from a friend called Hugh. They contained nothing of any significance as far as the detective could ascertain, and he felt no relish for examining Bowles' papers further. He replaced the briefcase and sat down in the armchair again to wait for Klammer, the fingerprint officer.

He drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair, irritated by the pique he felt at this case. It was just a suicide, after all. Bowles was undoubtedly a bright young man, but he was also unstable, and not particularly communicative about his feelings. Maybe something particular had happened in the hour or so after he got back from the bar to compel him to take his own life. Maybe nothing had happened, except whatever well of misery and grief he had in his life had suddenly and unexpectedly spilled over. Davies and Hawken had both been testy and agitated, but it was perhaps understandable given the fact they had tried deliberately to monitor Bowles' emotional state, and failed. Smailes lit a cigarette and reached down for an empty ashtray in the hearth of the old fireplace. He glanced at his watch, saw that it was almost three-twenty, and realized he might have a long wait for Klammer.

Smailes reflected that this was probably his last visit to the room before the family came to dispose of the belongings, and took out his notebook to sketch the relative positions of the furniture in the room, and the position in which he had discovered the body, which he would need for the inquest. He considered going further, making a list of the contents of the drawer, the briefcase and the file cabinet, but felt no enthusiasm for such a fruitless task. Besides, the notes on the Kennedy murder had aroused his curiosity. How was it that Bowles had described Ruby? “Seamless venality uncluttered by any concern . . .” Pretty florid prose for a math student. Needing to kill time, Smailes reached back into the file drawer and removed the first
Kennedy
file, the one called
The Geometry of a Murder
.

By the time Klammer arrived forty five minutes later, Smailes hardly heard the knock on the door. He was completely engrossed in Simon Bowles' exposition of the events in Dealey Plaza, Dallas on November 22, 1963. Through Bowles' depiction, the detective felt that he was there at the scene, hearing the gunfire roar, flinging himself to the sidewalk in panic, rushing up the grassy knoll with the other cops, finding nothing. Despite the awkwardness of Bowles' writing, he painted a vivid and gripping picture of the physical circumstances of Kennedy's murder. He had made many drawings of the configuration of buildings, cars and people on that Friday lunch-time, and the relationship between these components was stated in terms of geometric and algebraic equations that Smailes could not understand. Bowles' notes however were typed and were relatively easy to follow. Occasionally they presumed some knowledge about the Kennedy assassination that Smailes did not have, but more often they presented a patient, step-by-step description of his conclusions. Smailes found the reconstruction quite fascinating, his professional curiosity engaged by Bowles' painstaking reasoning. It seemed that Simon Bowles, by claiming to apply strict mathematical and physical rules to the known evidence, concluded that three gunmen fired on Kennedy that day. Didn't the official account state conclusively that Oswald was the lone gunman? Smailes wondered if anyone else had ever subjected the assassination scene to such laborious mathematical analysis. If Bowles was right, his theory disproved the accepted version. As the detective sergeant considered the implication of this discovery, he realized that the soft tapping behind him was in fact the lab officer knocking at the door. He hurriedly replaced the file in its drawer and let Alex Klammer into the room.

The two policemen completed their work with little discussion between them. Klammer was an industrious man a little older than Smailes, whose professionalism seemed to have a barb to it, as if confronting Detective Sergeant Smailes with his unorthodox reputation by soundly repudiating it. His technique was thoroughly proper and unhurried, and his manner respectful and distant. Smailes also knew that Klammer and his wife were neighbors of Yvonne and her new husband, that they played whist or something together, and the connection made him uncomfortable. Klammer had completed his work on the typewriter and other objects on the desk and was standing on the chair dusting the plant hanger.

“Nothing but smears, Sergeant,” he said, squinting at the plastic pot, with his back to Smailes. “It's either been wiped or handled recently with a cloth.”

Typically, Klammer had not attempted to move the evidence at all, but was holding it lightly with his surgical gloves. Smailes concealed his annoyance that his own brusquer handling of the pot might have obscured good prints, saying instead that he had figured as much, that the file cabinet might be better. Klammer climbed down carefully and proceeded to work on the cabinet in his absorbed, self-conscious way. As Smailes imagined, there were some good lifts from the case and drawer fronts, but nothing from the knurled metal pulls of the drawers themselves. The lifts from the typewriter would be the best; he knew, and he reassured himself that he had done the right thing, even if it was second thought, by bringing in the fingerprint officer. As Klammer was methodically returning his instruments to their case, he felt a momentary concern that the labman might have parked a marked car in the college's restricted car park, and thereby given his presence away. If Klammer was offended by the question, he carefully concealed it, answering casually that he had parked at the foot of Trinity Street and walked to the main entrance, heedful of Smailes' wish to keep his visit secret. He had not been challenged entering the college, he explained. Was that all, he wanted to know?

Klammer's deadpan manner must be an asset at the card table, Smailes decided. He asked the officer to call through to the coroner's DC, and make sure that prints were lifted from Bowles' hands before the undertaker's people got hold of the body, if possible. Such a procedure was not always routine in a suicide, and Klammer was to refer any objections to him personally. He asked how long it would be before Klammer could run comparisons, and confirm any unknown prints.

“Oh, a couple of days, Sergeant, depending on the quality, you know. Are there any others we need to take, for elimination?”

Smailes had already thought of this. Hawken had said no one had touched anything, which meant there had only been himself and the scenes of crimes and coroner's officers in the room. The others had touched only the belt, he guessed.

“Let's wait and see. Maybe mine,” Smailes grinned. If Klammer thought the remark was funny, he did not show it. He told Smailes he would get him a report as soon as possible, and left unobtrusively, leaving Smailes alone once more in the bleak little room.

There was something about the willing efficiency of Detective Constable Klammer that Smailes found depressing. It was the same with Ted Swedenbank—a sort of uncontrived eagerness, a buoyancy that Smailes himself was unable to muster. He knew at times his colleagues on the force thought his manner stuck up or conceited, that his cynicism and humor were in some subtle way designed to put them down. He honestly did not think this was fair, and it hurt him when these rumors got back to him. The fact was, he thought they were dishonest, the Klammers and Swedenbanks, who denied ambiguity and uncertainty with their bright professionalism. How could you not be somewhat cynical if you took two seconds to look around you? After all, they worked for the police, not the church. If cops couldn't laugh at the contradictions of their work they were a pretty pathetic institution, in Smailes' view. He simply was not a true believer, he realized, and it pained him. It meant he could never fully belong, or fully relax with the rules. And while he felt a certain defiance in the superiority of his judgment, he also sometimes felt dejected and isolated. He looked at his watch, noticed it was well after five, and decided it was time he went home.

Much later he decided it was his mood after Klammer left that afternoon that was decisive in the unravelling of the whole extraordinary business. He was not sure whether it was characteristic or uncharacteristic, but he went back to the third drawer of Bowles' filing cabinet and removed all the typed summary files from the
Kennedy
file, which together made up a manuscript five or six inches thick. He put them under his jacket and raincoat, and held them against his body with his hand in his coat pocket, and then left the room, locking it carefully behind him. He met no one in the corridor or as he strode around the two courts on his way back to the lodge. However, as he spoke with the duty porter behind the counter and handed back the pass key, he did think it strange that in his inner office, Paul Beecroft was listening intently to Bunty Allen, Bowles' bedder whom Smailes had questioned that morning. The detective could not hear what was being said, but Mrs. Allen looked considerably more animated than earlier that day, as she emphasized a point with a thrusting motion of her hands. Blue smoke curled from a cigarette parked in an ashtray in front of her as Beecroft, impassive, leant on the back of a chair which held his suit jacket, listening. Smailes was surprised because he distinctly remembered Hawken telling her to go home for the day, many hours ago.

The dogs strained at their leash and the young man could barely restrain them as they pulled him along the street. A sharp wind made his eyes and throat ache, and his shoulder socket felt wrenched and damaged. The houses seemed to stretch for ever, and at every opening in a wall or hedge, the whippets would pull more fiercely to explore the terrain inside. The sky was a sickly purple color.

Suddenly the animals found a narrow aperture beside a gatepost and surged through into the garden beyond. The young man braced his shoulder against the concrete post to stop them, and began pulling them slowly back into the street. Their squirming strength diminished and became a leaden mass. He pulled and pulled, and saw at the end of the leash a leather belt. And then, inexorably, the head and shoulders came into sight. He saw the thin, fair curls, and then he saw the awful grimace on the face of Simon Bowles.

In the courtyard at the base of Bowles' staircase, Hawken and Beecroft were speaking to two ambulancemen who held a stretcher between them, pointing to the far side of the court and the exit to Great Court and the street beyond. Their gestures unfurled in slow motion, and though their mouths moved, there was no sound beyond the soft swirling of the wind. The wind stirred the hair at Hawken's temples. Beside them stood Ted Swedenbank and Bunty Allen. She held a yellow cloth duster and wore a scarf on her head, a familiar green scarf with a check pattern. Smailes looked more closely and saw it was his mother's scarf, and the woman was not Bunty Allen but in fact his mother, who seemed to be crying noiselessly as she leant against Swedenbank's arm. He glanced down at the stretcher and the covered body it held. The wind began to stir the cream-colored sheet that draped the corpse. A sudden gust lifted the top of the sheet into the air, and inert on the stretcher he saw the face of his father, blue with toxemia. The myocardial infarction had already shut down his heart. He saw his mother cup her face in her hands in despair. He woke up and snapped on the light.